Rory Williams walked into the therapy room. Lorrinda - her new therapist - followed her closely.
She examined the room. It was exactly the same as all the others; it had the same boring, baby blue wallpaper that supposedly 'calmed' the patients. The couches were black leather ones and the floor was carpeted.
Rory took a seat and Lorrinda sat down opposite her.
Lorrinda slipped off her shoes. This was something that most therapists did, Rory noticed. At the beginning of the session, they took off their shoes and to signal the end of it, they slipped their shoes back on.
"So, Aurora -"
"Rory," she automatically corrected. Lorrinda nodded once.
"Alright, 'rory, tell me why you're here."
Shouldnt you know? Rory thought bitterly. She didnt want to tell Lorrinda the reason she was there.
Thousands of people's mothers died every day - if not more - and none of them had to go to therapy. Well, most of them did, but not all.
"Felicity," Rory replied. "I'm here because of Felicity."
Lorrinda wrote something down. Felicity was Rory's step-mother. Her father had gotten married to her two years before.
Rory and Felicity did not get along at all. And things had started getting worse now that Felicity was pregnant - with twins.
"You're having problems with your step-mother?" Lorrinda asked.
"No," Rory said. That was a lie, but she wasnt about to tell the therapist that. "She makes my appointments for me."
"And why does she think you need therapy?"
Rory remained silent. If you didnt know what to say then you shouldnt have to say anything at all, right?
Felicity thought Rory was crazy. That's why she was there in that therapy room. Rory, however, disagreed. Maybe she was a little bit...out of it, but she had every reason to be. Her mother had been killed right in front of her. That wasnt something any teenager should have to go through.
And its not like her father was helping her in any way. He was always working, and when he wasnt, he was out with Felicity. It's like he had completely forgotten about his own flesh and blood.
"Because my mother died," Rory said simply.
"What exactly happened that day?" Rory was a bit taken aback. None of the other therapists had been so...blunt.
The day her mother had died started off like any other day.
She'd dragged herself out of bed and got done. Her mother had barged into her room an hour later, stating that she had to go to the bank. Rory loved going to the bank with her mother. They always made fun of the people together. You always see the weirdest characters at the bank.
Whilst standing in the queue, making fun of a middle-aged lady who was singing the Barney theme song under her breath, about five men ran in. They were wearing ski-masks and holding really big guns.
Rory's mothers first reaction was to get her daughter out of the bank unnoticed, which she managed to do. Just as Diana - Rory's mother - was about to sneak out, one of the men spotted her and shot her in the back of her head. She died instantly.
"The bank was robbed and my mother was killed."
Writing something else down on the piece of paper, Lorrinda continued to ask Rory questions.
After about ten minutes, Rory was starting to get extremely bored.
"How's school?" This question caught her attention. School. Her own personal hell. After Diana's death, Rory lost all of her friends. Not because they didnt want to be friends with someone who's mother had just died, but because Rory had started to push them away. She preferred being alone.
After her suicide attempt and constant talk of death, her friends became more and more distant and eventually, she had none left.
Suicide. The word sounded a lot more violent than the attempt had been.
It had been the night before her seventeenth birthday. She was trying to think of one good reason to stay alive. One good reason to be happy. She couldnt think of anything.
So, walking to the bathroom, she grabbed a bottle of pills - the kind her father used for his back pains.
Nine, ten, eleven. She couldnt remember how many she took, she just kept shoving them down her throat. Before falling asleep - for what she hoped was the last time - she grabbed a pen and a piece of paper.
On it, she messily wrote:
With me gone, the sun would still shine and the birds would still chirp. So why not?
Unfortunately, two days later she woke up in a cold hospital room. Her dad and Felicity were standing at the foot of her bed.
Felicity was looking at her with a surprisingly concerned look on her face. And her father; he just looked broken, tired, empty. Exactly how she felt.
"School's fine."
"Okay Rory," Lorrinda said, closing her notebook and crossing her arms over her chest, "before you came in, I had a conversation with your dad. He asked me to ask you something that he really needs to know."
Rory motioned for her to continue.
"Why did you try to end your life?"
A simple question with a simple anwer.
"They told me they wanted me to be happy, and being with my mother makes me happy."
